The NFL is considering not inviting players who are academically ineligible to the Combine, according to CBS Sports' Bruce Feldman.

According to Feldman's source "the move is being discussed because of the increased scrutiny on the maturity and commitment of the prospects entering the NFL... adding that if this measure was in place in 2013, a sizable group of players would not have been invited to Indianapolis for the Combine." We are intrigued by the move and wonder if this rule might be common among other post season activities.

Hate it. If a guy honestly screwed up and is working hard to redeem himself, he should have that chance. NFL teams should be smart enough to see which players are bad seeds and which made some mistakes. I think questionable character players should be scrutinized more now, but there shouldn't be a firm rule to exclude them.

It would be interesting to see over the past few seasons who actually would be academically ineligible come combine time.

The NFL has the best minor league system in pro sports, college football. It produces quality NFL players on a consistent basis, gets most of them ready and creates free band awareness and makes star athletes that are famous before they even get to the league.

The combine measures physical abilities, sure there is the metal side of it with the interviews and the wonderlic, but no one remembers wonderlic scores but they sure remember 40 times.

Most players do well with the academics during the season but you do see some fall off at the end then they cannot play the bowl game. But worst case if they do it, they will just get those athletic numbers on the pro day which they already do.

This is a ******* awful idea. It's ridiculous in the first place that there is no means for a player to become a professional athlete in this sport without being a university student for 3 years when being a university student has nothing to do at all with becoming a pro athlete. So now the National Football League is going to blackball players if they are not doing something that has little to no correlation with their ability to be a successful professional athlete and something that has absolutely nothing to do with whether someone will become a druggy or a violent criminal. Nothing. This is just another case of the NFL being irrationally reactionary.

And the fact that this is in anyway being connected to Aaron Hernandez is one of the dumbest ******* things I've heard in a while.

Sounds like it benefits the colleges more than the NFL. Forces kids who are looking ahead to the NFL to not do so at the expense if their grades, and may encourage guys who are failing to stick around to boost their grades. I'm not outraged about if, cause grades and transcripts can be forged, but it seems silly.

This doesn't make sense for anyone aside from the NCAA. It certainly doesn't benefit incoming players, and it doesn't benefit NFL teams either because they miss out on an opportunity to scout a player.

... so what's your point? that it's unfair that they have to receive a free education, or that the nfl thinks it's useful to keep players in college for three years? i have no idea what you're actually arguing. is the nfl suddenly a better league if it lets teams draft high school players? does that somehow make it more watchable or interesting?

No, I'm saying that being academically eligible doesn't effect how good an athlete can be. This seems like changing something for the sake of changing. I was just comparing how irrelevant this is to the actual sport. Baseball and hockey both draft 17 year old kids who didn't have to qualify academically. It has no barring on the product put on the field of play whether these kids are academically eligible. If anything, lets make sure these kids pass all of their drug tests while in school before worrying about whether or not they passed a class at a college they would've never had the chance to go to without football.